Norway’s Delphi rolls out GEM Ucits

By: Jonathan Boyd | 03 May 2013

Delphi Funds, the Norwegian manager, has rolled out a global emerging market Ucits, which is initially seeking sales in Nordic markets and the Netherlands, but which will be available to institutional investors beyond these markets.

Delphi Emerging is managed by Espen Furnes, who is part of the Oslo based management team.

The fund will be managed according to Delphi’s approach, which also explains why there has not yet been such a product from the house despite previous exposure to emerging markets via its other funds.

“Delphi’s investment strategy works well in liquid markets. Time of launch is no coincidence. In our view, liquidity, regulatory conditions and breadth of companies are finally sufficient in emerging markets to be coherent with our investment approach,” said Furnes, who also manages Delphi Europe.

“We note that is has been difficult for many EM funds to beat the MSCI EM Index on a consistent basis, leading us to think that our stock selection approach might have an advantage. Also the fact that several popular funds in this space have grown large and have shown a tendency to restrict inflows, make this a highly interesting challenge for us.”

The new fund is registered for public sale in Norway and Sweden currently, and authorisation is expected for Finland and the Netherlands in the near future – mirroring existing distribution of the Delphi Global, Nordic and Europe portfolios.

Delphi Emerging will maintain a concentrated portfolio of 35-45 equity positions in companies based in emerging markets. Shares are denominated in NOK, and there is no currency hedging.